NBC’s ’30 Rock’ may just make it after all

THE Watergate tapes were America’s obsession during the brilliant run of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

The Alec Baldwin tape was what America was obsessing over late last week, in the midst of the brilliant run of NBC’s freshman sitcom “30 Rock.”

Baldwin’s voicemail tirade at his daughter (he called her a “rude little pig” and seemed confused about whether she was 11 or 12) was presumably leaked to the celebrity website TMZ.com as a vindictive strike in the actor’s divorce from Kim Basinger. On it, Baldwin unleashed a Nixonian rant (“You better be ready, Friday -- the 20th -- to meet with me,” was one of the gentler moments) at his daughter, a 12 (or 11)-year-old who had failed to pick up his telephone call at their agreed-upon hour.

Baldwin lost me, finally, at “rude little pig”; before then I was rooting for him as if he were still fictional -- a man by the name of Jack Donaghy, fierce, strange and even cuddly, a whiz at the microwave oven business, for which he’d been handed the entertainment reins at GE-owned NBC.

That’s who Baldwin is on TV, on the joyous “30 Rock.” Low-rated in its first season, which concludes Thursday, “30 Rock” has more legs than “The Office” because it’s grounded in a relationship that has all the stirrings of Mary Richards and Lou Grant.

As Liz Lemon, plucky executive producer of a variety show in the way that Mary Richards produced the local news in Minneapolis, Tina Fey is slouching toward sitcom iconography -- independent single woman holding her own among boy-men in a city in which she is positively alone.

I could never get on board with the notion that redheaded, madcap Debra Messing was channeling Lucille Ball on “Will & Grace,” but I’d sign a petition stating Fey is reprising Moore in “30 Rock.”

Though Liz’s “you’re going to make it after all” moments are more ignominious, as when a passing drunk spit in her mouth recently.

“There is an 80% chance in the next election that I will tell all my friends that I am voting for Barack Obama, but I will secretly vote for John McCain,” she told a love interest recently.

Fey has relaxed into the role now, whereas she seemed to cower amid the demands of being the lead at first, not letting us feel into who Liz is. It was as if the actress (more of a writer chick at heart, really, the show is based on her experiences running “Saturday Night Live”) herself believed she wasn’t enough of a television star.

Fey, in her 30s, comes to the game much less polished than Moore, who had already starred in “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

But Fey has the wisdom of an experienced writer; she understands the need for a character, including her own, to get out of the way sometimes. Maybe too out of the way. As an artist, Fey had to figure out where the actual in her soul meets the fictional.

Baldwin, who plays the mercurial, tone-deaf network head Donaghy, is an ex-movie star gone half-to-seed, bloated and slouched. Together, the reluctant entertainer (Fey) and the outsized one (Baldwin) make great music; right now, it’s hard to imagine having seen enough of them in scenes together.

You can trace their chemistry back to the weekly scenes in which Mary would step into Mr. Grant’s office for a chat, the boss-employee relationship doing a slow build into something else -- from pseudo boss to pseudo father -- as when Liz tried to quit her job last week and move to Cleveland with her boyfriend after spending a magical weekend there.

“For God’s sakes, Lemon, we’d all like to flee to the Cleve,” Jack told her, “... but we fight those urges, because we have responsibilities.”

It’s difficult to capture in words the joy of hearing Baldwin intone “flee to the Cleve” in that low, rich grumble he’s employing (I kept waiting for it on his voicemail, but alas, it never arrived amid the fit of pique).

In tone, “30 Rock” is closer to “The Simpsons” than “Mary Tyler Moore” (Cleveland as paradise is a writers’ room joke, as was the hilarious scene a few weeks ago in which Baldwin, in a dream sequence, appeared as Thomas Jefferson and was booed at a taping of “Maury”).

But the show, which has already been renewed, is our next great workplace comedy. You couldn’t set “Mary Tyler Moore” at a news station today without somehow acknowledging that local news doesn’t really exist anymore. Feisty, midmarket WJM is now New York-centric NBC. And a scandal like Baldwin’s voicemail tantrum at his daughter breaks into the news like it is news, practically presidential, but with no subpoenas required.

Somehow, you feel Liz Lemon would know what to do.

*

paul.brownfield@latimes.com